In Northern India

From May 1897 to the end of that year, the
Swami travelled and lectured extensively in Northern India.
The physicians had advised him to go as soon as possible
to Almora, where the air was dry and cool, and he had
been invited by prominent people in Northern India to
give discourses on Hinduism. Accompanied by some of
his brother disciples and his own disciples, he left
Calcutta, and he was joined later by the Seviers, Miss Müller,
and Goodwin.

In Lucknow he was given a cordial welcome. The
sight of the Himalayas in Almora brought him inner peace
and filled his mind with the spirit of detachment and
exaltation of which these great mountains are the symbol. But
his peace was disturbed for a moment when he received
letters from American disciples about the malicious
reports against his character spread by Christian
missionaries, including Dr. Barrows of the Parliament of Religions
in Chicago. Evidently they had become jealous of the
Swami's popularity in India. Dr. Barrows told the Americans
that the report of the Swami's reception in India was
greatly exaggerated. He accused the Swami of being a liar
and remarked: "I could never tell whether to take him
seriously or not. He struck me as being a Hindu Mark Twain. He is
a man of genius and has some following, though
only temporary."

The Swami was grieved. At his request the people
of Madras had given Dr. Barrows a big reception, but
the missionary, lacking religious universalism, had not
made much of an impression.

In a mood of weariness the Swami wrote to a
friend on June 3, 1897:

As for myself, I am quite content. I have roused
a good many of our people, and that was all I
wanted. Let things have their course and karma its sway. I
have no bonds here below. I have seen life, and it is all
self — life is for self, love is for self, honour for self,
everything for self. I look back and scarcely find any action I
have done for self — even my wicked deeds were not
for self. So I am content — not that I feel I have
done anything especially good or great, but the world is
so little, life so mean a thing, existence so, so servile,
that I wonder and smile that human beings, rational
souls, should be running after this self — so mean
and detestable a prize.

This is the truth. We are caught in a trap, and
the sooner one gets out the better for one. I have seen
the truth — let the body float up or down, who cares?...

I was born for the life of a scholar — retired,
quiet, poring over my books. But the Mother
dispensed otherwise. Yet the tendency is there.

In Almora the Swamiji's health improved greatly.
On May 29 he wrote to a friend: 'I began to take a lot of
exercise on horseback, both morning and evening. Since then I
have been very much better indeed....I really began to feel
that it was a pleasure to have a body. Every movement made
me conscious of strength — every movement of the
muscles was pleasurable....You ought to see me, Doctor, when I
sit meditating in front of the beautiful snow-peaks and
repeat from the Upanishads: "He has neither disease, nor
decay, nor death; for verily, he has obtained a body full of the
fire of yoga."'

He was delighted to get the report that his
disciples and spiritual brothers were plunging heart and soul
into various philanthropic and missionary activities.

From Almora he went on a whirlwind tour of
the Punjab and Kashmir, sowing everywhere the seeds
of rejuvenated Hinduism. In Bareilly he encouraged
the students to organize themselves to carry on the work
of practical Vedanta. In Ambala he was happy to see
his beloved disciples Mr. and Mrs. Sevier. After spending
a few days in Amritsar, Dharamsala, and Murree, he
went to Kashmir.

In Jammu the Swami had a long interview with
the Maharaja and discussed with him the possibility
of founding in Kashmir a monastery for giving young
people training in non-dualism. In the course of the
conversation he sadly remarked how the present-day Hindus
had deviated from the ideals of their forefathers, and
how people were clinging to various superstitions in the
name of religion. He said that in olden days people were
not outcasted even when they committed such real sins
as adultery, and the like; whereas nowadays one
became untouchable simply by violating the rules about food.

On the same topic he said a few months later, at
Khetri: 'The people are neither Hindus nor Vedantins — they
are merely "don't touchists"; the kitchen is their temple and
cooking-pots are their objects of worship. This state
of things must go. The sooner it is given up, the better for
our religion. Let the Upanishads shine in their glory, and at
the same time let not quarrels exist among different sects.'

In Lahore the Swami gave a number of lectures,
among which was his famous speech on the Vedanta
philosophy, lasting over two hours. He urged the students of Lahore
to cultivate faith in man as a preparation for faith in God.
He asked them to form an organization, purely
non-sectarian in character, to teach hygiene to the poor, spread
education among them, and nurse the sick. One of his missions in
the Punjab was to establish harmony among people
belonging to different sects, such as the Arya Samajists and
the orthodox Hindus. It was in Lahore that the Swami met
Mr. Tirtha Ram Goswami, then a professor of mathematics,
who eventually gained wide recognition as Swami Ram
Tirtha. The professor became an ardent admirer of
Swami Vivekananda.

Next the Swami travelled to Dehra-Dun, where,
for the first ten days, he lived a rather quiet life. But soon
he organized a daily class on the Hindu scriptures for
his disciples and companions, which he continued to
conduct during the whole trip. At the earnest invitation of
his beloved disciple the Raja of Khetri, he visited his
capital, stopping on the way at Delhi and Alwar, which
were familiar to him from his days of wandering prior to
his going to America. Everywhere he met old friends
and disciples and treated them with marked affection. The
Raja of Khetri lavished great honours upon him and also
gave him a handsome donation for the Belur Math, which
was being built at that time.

Before returning to Calcutta, he visited
Kishengarh, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Indore, and Khandwa and thus
finished his lecture tour in North India. During this tour
he explained to his fellow countrymen the salient
features of Hinduism and told them that they would have
a glorious future if they followed the heritage of their
past. He emphasized that the resurgent nationalism of
India must be based on her spiritual ideals, but that
healthy scientific and technological knowledge from the
West, also, had to be assimilated in the process of growth.
The fundamental problem of India, he pointed out, was
to organize the whole country around religious ideals.
By religion the Swami meant not local customs which
served only a contemporary purpose, but the eternal
principles taught in the Vedas.

Wherever the Swami went he never wearied of
trying to rebuild individual character in India, pointing out
that the strength of the whole nation depended upon
the strength of the individual. Therefore each individual,
he urged, whatever might be his occupation, should try, if
he desired the good of the nation as a whole, to build up
his character and acquire such virtues as courage,
strength, self-respect, love, and service of others. To the young
men, especially, he held out renunciation and service as
the hightest ideal. He preached the necessity of spreading
a real knowledge of Sanskrit, without which a Hindu
would remain an alien to his own rich culture. To promote
unity among the Hindus, he encouraged intermarriage
between castes and sub-castes, and wanted to reorganize the
Indian universities so that they might produce real patriots,
rather than clerks, lawyers, diplomats, and Government officials.

Swami Vivekananda's keen intellect saw the need
of uniting the Hindus and Moslems on the basis of the
Advaita philosophy, which teaches the oneness of all. One June
10, 1898, he wrote to a Moslem gentleman at Nainital:

The Hindus may get the credit for arriving
at Advaitism earlier than other races, they being an
older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet
practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves
towards all mankind as one's own soul, is yet to be
developed among the Hindus universally. On the other hand,
our experience is that if ever the followers of any
religion approach to this equality in an appreciable degree
on the plane of practical work-a-day life — it may be
quite unconscious generally of the deeper meaning and
the underlying principle of such conduct, which the
Hindus as a rule so clearly perceive — it is those of
Islam and Islam alone.

Therefore we are firmly persuaded that
without the help of practical Islam, the theories of
Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are
entierely valuless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to
lead mankind to the place where there is neither the
Vedas nor the Bible nor the Koran; yet this has to be done
by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the
Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but
the varied expressions of the Religion which is
Oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best.

For our own motherland a junction of the
two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedantic
brain and Islamic body — is the only hope.
I see in my mind's eye the future perfect
India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and
invincible, with Vedantic brain and Islamic body.

For the regeneration of India, in the Swami's
view, the help of the West was indispensable. The thought of
India had been uppermost in his mind when he had
journeyed to America. On April 6, 1897, the Swami, in the course of
a letter to the lady editor of an Indian magazine, had
written: 'It has been for the good of India that religious
preaching in the West has been done and will be done. It has
ever been my conviction that we shall not be able to rise
unless the Western countries come to our help. In India no
appreciation of merit can be found, no financial support,
and what is most lamentable of all, there is not a bit of
practicality.'

The year 1898 was chiefly devoted to the training
of Vivekananda's disciples, both Indian and Western, and
to the consolidation of the work already started. During
this period he also made trips to Darjeeling, Almora, and
Kashmir.

In February 1898, the monastery was removed
from Alambazar to Nilambar Mukherjee's garden house in
the village of Belur, on the west bank of the Ganga. The
Swami, while in Calcutta, lived at Balaram Bose's house,
which had been a favourite haunt of Shri Ramakrishna's
during his lifetime. But he had no rest either in the monastery
or in Calcutta, where streams of visitors came to him
daily. Moreover, conducting a heavy correspondence
consumed much of his time and energy; one can not but be amazed
at the hundreds of letters the Swami wrote with his own hand
to friends and disciples. Most of these reveal his
intense thinking, and some his superb wit.

While at the monastery, he paid especial attention
to the training of the sannyasins and the brahmacharins,
who, inspired by his message, had renounced home and
dedicated themselves to the realization of God and the
service of humanity. Besides conducting regular classes on
the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the physical sciences,
and the history of the nations, he would spend hours with
the students in meditation and devotional singing.
Spiritual practices were intensified on holy days.

In the early part of 1898, the site of the Belur
Math, the present Headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math
and Mission, was purchased with the help of a
generous donation from Miss Müller, the devoted admirer of
the Swami. Mrs. Ole Bull gave another handsome gift
to complete the construction, and the shrine at the Belur
Math was consecrated, as we shall see, on December 9,
1898. Sometime during this period the Swami initiated into
the monastic life Swami Swarupananda, whom he
considered to be a real 'acquisition.' This qualified aspirant was
given initiation after only a few days' stay at the
monastery, contrary to the general rule of the Ramakrishna Order.
Later he became editor of the monthly magazine
Prabuddha Bharata, and first president of the Advaita Ashrama
at Mayavati, in the Himalayas, founded on March 19, 1899.

Among the Western devotees who lived with
Swami Vivekananda at this time were Mr. and Mrs. Sevier,
Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Henrietta F. Müller, Miss Josephine
MacLeod, and Miss Margaret E. Noble, all of whom travelled with
him at various times in Northern India. The Seviers identified
themselves completely with the work at the
Mayavati Advaita Ashrama. Mrs. Ole Bull, the wife of the
famous Norwegian violinist, and a lady of social position,
great culture, and large heart, had been an ardent admirer of
the Swami during his American trip. Miss Müller, who
knew the Swami in both England and America and had
helped defray, together with the Seviers and Mr. Sturdy, the
expenses of his work in England, had come to India to organize
an educational institution for Indian women.

Miss MacLeod had attended Swami
Vivekananda's classes in New York, and for months at a time he had
been the guest of her relatives at their country home,
Ridgely Manor. She became his lifelong friend and admirer
and cherished his memory till the last day of her life, but
though she was devoted to him, she never renounced
her independence nor did he demand that she should. By
way of spiritual instruction, the Swami had once asked
Miss MacLeod to meditate on Om for a week and report to
him afterwards. When the teacher inquired how she felt,
she said that 'it was like a glow in the heart.' He
encouraged her and said: 'Good, keep on.' Many years later she
told her friends that the Swami made her realize that she
was in eternity. 'Always remember,' the Swami had
admonished her, 'you are incidentally an American and a woman,
but always a child of God. Tell yourself day and night
who you are. Never forget it.' To her brother-in-law, Francis
H. Leggett, the Swami had written, on July 16, 1896,
in appreciation of Miss MacLeod: 'I simply admire Joe Joe
in her tact and quiet ways. She is a feminine statesman.
She could wield a kingdom. I have seldom seen such
strong yet good common sense in a human being.'

When Miss MacLeod asked the Swami's
permission to come to India, he wrote on a postcard: 'Do come by
all means, only you must remember this: The Europeans
and Indians live as oil and water. Even to speak of living
with the natives is damning, even at the capitals. You will
have to bear with people who wear only a loin-cloth; you
will see me with only a loin-cloth about me. Dirt and
filth everywhere, and brown people. But you will have
plenty of men to talk philosophy to you.' He also wrote to
her that she must not come to India if she expected
anything else, for the Indians could not 'bear one more word
of criticism'.

On one occasion, while travelling in Kashmir with
the Swami and his party, she happened to make a
laughing remark about one of his South Indian disciples with
the caste-mark of the brahmins of his sect on his forehead.
This appeared grotesque to her. The Swami turned upon
her 'like a lion, withered her with a glance, and cried:
"Hands off! Who are you? What have you ever done?"'

Miss MacLeod was crestfallen. But later she learnt
that the same poor brahmin had been one of those who,
by begging, had collected the money that had made it
possible for the Swami to undertake his trip to America.

'How can I best help you,' she asked the Swami
when she arrived in India. 'Love India,' was his reply.

One day Swami Vivekananda told Miss MacLeod
that since his return to India he had had no personal
money. She at once promised to pay him fifty dollars a month
as long as he lived and immediately gave him three
hundred dollars for six months in advance. The Swami
asked jokingly if it would be enough for him.
'Not if you take heavy cream every day!' she said.

The Swami gave the money to Swami Trigunatita
to defray the initial expenses of the newly started
Bengali magazine, the Udbodhan.

But of all Swami Vivekananda's Western disciples,
the most remarkable was Margaret E Noble, who was
truly his spiritual daughter. She had attended the Swami's
classes and lectures in London and resolved to dedicate her life
to his work in India. When she expressed to him her desire
to come to India, the Swami wrote to her, on July 29,
1897:

'Let me tell you frankly that I am now convinced that
you have a great future in the work for India. What was
wanted was not a man but a woman, a real lioness, to work for
the Indians — women especially. India cannot yet produce
great women, she must borrow them from other nations.
Your education, sincerity, purity, immense love,
determination, and above all, your Celtic blood, makes you just the
woman wanted.

'Yet the difficulties are many. You cannot form any
idea of the misery, the superstition, and the slavery that are
here. You will be in the midst of a mass of half-naked men
and women with quaint ideas of caste and isolation,
shunning the white-skins through fear or hatred and hated by
them intensely. On the other hand, you will be looked upon
by the white as a crank, and every one of your movements
will be watched with suspicion.

'Then the climate is fearfully hot, our winter in
most places being like your summer, and in the south it is
always blazing. Not one European comfort is to be had in
places out of the cities. If in spite of all this you dare venture
into the work, you are welcome, a hundred times welcome. As
for me, I am nobody here as elsewhere, but what
little influence I have shall be devoted to your service.

'You must think well before you plunge in,
and afterwards if you fail in this or get disgusted, on my part
I promise you I will stand by you unto
death, whether you work for India or not, whether you give up
Vedanta or remain
in it. "The tusks of the elephant come out but never go
back" — so are the words of a man never retracted. I promise
you that.'

He further asked her to stand on her own feet
and never seek help from his other Western women devotees.

Miss Noble came to India on January 28, 1898, to
work with Miss Müller for the education of Indian women.
The Swami warmly introduced her to the public of Calcutta
as a 'gift of England to India,' and in March made her
take the vow of brahmacharya, that is to say, the life of a
religious celibate devoted to the realization of God. He also
gave her the name of Nivedita, the 'Dedicated,' by which
she has ever since been cherished by the Indians with
deep respect and affection. The ceremony was performed in
the chapel of the monastery. He first taught her how to
worship Siva and then made the whole ceremony culminate in
an offering at the feet of Buddha.

'Go thou,' he said, 'and follow him who was born
and gave his life for others five hundred times before he
attained the vision of the Buddha.'

The Swami now engaged himself in the training
of Sister Nivedita along with the other Western disciples.
And certainly it was a most arduous task. They were asked
to associate intimately with the Holy Mother, the widow
of Sri Ramakrishna, who at once adopted them as
her 'children.' Then the Swami would visit them almost daily
to reveal to them the deep secrets of the Indian
world — its history, folklore, customs, and traditions. Mercilessly
he tried to uproot from their minds all preconceived
notions and wrong ideas about India. He wanted them to love
India as she was at the present time, with her poverty,
ignorance, and backwardness, and not the India of yore, when
she had produced great philosophies, epics, dramas,
and religious systems.

It was not always easy for the Western disciples
to understand the religious ideals and forms of worship of
the Hindus. For instance, one day in the great Kali temple
of Calcutta, one Western lady shuddered at the sight of
the blood of the goats sacrificed before the Deity, and
exclaimed, 'Why is there blood before the Goddess?' Quickly the
Swami retorted, 'Why not a little blood to complete the picture?'

The disciples had been brought up in the tradition
of Protestant Christianity, in which the Godhead
was associated only with what was benign and beautiful,
and Satan with the opposite.

With a view to Hinduizing their minds, the
Swami asked his Western disciples to visit Hindu ladies at
their homes and to observe their dress, food, and customs,
which were radically different from their own. Thus he put to
a severe test their love for Vedanta and India. In the
West they had regarded the Swami as a prophet showing
them the path of liberation, and as a teacher of the
universal religion. But in India he appeared before them, in
addition, in the role of a patriot, an indefatigable worker for
the regeneration of his motherland.

The Swami began to teach Nivedita to lose
herself completely in the Indian consciousness. She gradually
adopted the food, clothes, language, and general habits
of the Hindus.

'You have to set yourself,' he said to her, 'to
Hinduize your thoughts, your needs, your conceptions, your
habits. Your life, internal and external, has to become all that
an orthodox brahmin brahmacharini's ought to be.
The method will come to you if you only desire it
sufficiently. But you have to forget your past and cause it to
be forgotten.' He wanted her to address the Hindus 'in
terms of their own orthodoxy.'

Swami Vivekananda would not tolerate in his
Western disciples any trace of chauvinism, any patronizing
attitude or stupid criticism of the Indian way of life. They
could serve India only if they loved India, and they could
love India only if they knew India, her past glories and
her present problems. Thus later he took them on his trip
to Northern India, including Almora and Kashmir, and
told them of the sanctity of Varanasi and the magnificence
of Agra and Delhi; he related to them the history of
the Moghul Emperors and the Rajput heroes, and
also described the peasant's life, the duties of a farm
housewife, and the hospitality of poor villagers to wandering
monks. The teacher and his disciples saw together the sacred
rivers, the dense forests, the lofty mountains, the sun-baked
plains, the hot sands of the desert, and the gravel beds of the
rivers, all of which had played their parts in the creation of
Indian culture. And the Swami told them that in India custom
and culture were one. The visible manifestations of the
culture were the system of caste, the duties determined by
the different stages of life, the respect of parents as
incarnate gods, the appointed hours of religious service, the shrine
used for daily worship, the chanting of the Vedas by
the brahmin children, the eating of food with the right
hand and its use in worship and japa, the austerities of
Hindu widows, the kneeling in prayer of the Moslems
wherever the time of prayer might find them, and the ideal of
equality practised by the followers of Mohammed.

Nivedita possessed an aggressively Occidental
and intensely, English outlook. It was not easy for her
to eradicate instinctive national loyalties and strong
personal likes and dislikes. A clash between the teacher and
the disciple was inevitable. Ruthlessly the Swami crushed
her pride in her English upbringing. Perhaps, at the same
time, he wanted to protect her against the passionate
adoration she had for him. Nivedita suffered bitter anguish.

The whole thing reached its climax while they
were travelling together, some time after, in the Himalayas.
One day Miss MacLeod thought that Nivedita could no
longer bear the strain, and interceded kindly and gravely with
the Swami. 'He listened,' Sister Nivedita wrote later, 'and
went away. At evening, however, he returned, and finding
us together on the veranda, he turned to her (Miss
MacLeod) and said with the simplicity of a child: "You were right.
There must be a change. I am going away to the forests to be
alone, and when I come back I shall bring peace." Then he
turned away and saw that above us the moon was new, and
a sudden exaltation came into his voice as he said: "See,
the Mohammedans think much of the new moon. Let us
also, with the new moon, begin a new life."' As he said
these words, he lifted his hand and blessed his rebellious
disciple, who by this time was kneeling before him. It was
assuredly a moment of wonderful sweetness of reconciliation.
That evening in meditation Nivedita found
herself gazing deep into an Infinite Good, to the recognition
of which no egotistic reasoning had led her. 'And,' she
wrote, 'I understood for the first time that the greatest
teachers may destroy in us a personal relation only in order
to bestow the Impersonal Vision in its place.'

To resume our story, on March 30, 1898, the
Swami left for Darjeeling, for he badly needed a change to the
cool air of the Himalayas. Hardly had he begun to feel
the improvement in his health, when he had to come down
to Calcutta, where an outbreak of plague was striking terror.

Immediately he made plans for relief work with
the help of the members of the monastery and volunteers
from Calcutta.

When a brother disciple asked him where he
would get funds, the Swami replied: 'Why, we shall sell
if necessary the land which has just been purchased for
the monastery. We are sannyasins; we must be ready to
sleep under the trees and live on alms as we did before. Must
we care for the monastery and possessions when by
disposing of them we could relieve thousands of helpless
people suffering before our own eyes?' Fortunately this
extreme step was not necessary; the public gave him money for
the relief work.

The Swami worked hard to assuage the suffering
of the afflicted people. Their love and admiration for
him knew no bounds as they saw this practical application
of Vedanta at a time of human need.

The plague having been brought under control,
the Swami left Calcutta for Nainital on May 11,
accompanied by, among others, his Western disciples. From there the
party went to Almora where they met the Seviers.
During this tour the Swami never ceased instructing his
disciples. For his Western companions it was a rare opportunity
to learn Indian history, religion, and philosophy direct
from one who was an incarnation of the spirit of India. Some
of the talks the Swami gave were recorded by Sister
Nivedita in her charming book Notes of Some Wanderings with
the Swami Vivekananda.

In Almora the Swami received news of the deaths
of Pavhari Baba and Mr. Goodwin. He had been closely
drawn to the former during his days of wandering. Goodwin
died on June 2. Hearing of this irreparable loss, the
Swami exclaimed in bitter grief, 'My right hand is gone!'
To Goodwin's mother he wrote a letter of condolence in
which he said: 'The debt of gratitude I owe him can never
be repaid, and those who think they have been helped by
any thought of mine ought to know that almost every word
of it was published through the untiring and most
unselfish exertions of Mr. Goodwin. In him I have lost a friend
true as steel, a disciple of never-failing devotion, a worker
who knew not what tiring was, and the world is less rich by
the passing away of one of those few who are born, as it
were, to live only for others.'

The Swami also sent her the following poem,
which he had written in memory of Goodwin, bearing witness
to the affection of the teacher for the disciple:

Requiescat In Pace

Speed forth, O soul! upon thy star-strewn path;
Speed, blissful one! where thought is ever free,
Where time and space no longer mist the view;
Eternal peace and blessings be with thee!
Thy service true, complete thy sacrifice;
Thy home the heart of love transcendent find!
Remembrance sweet, that kills all space and time,
Like altar roses, fill thy place behind!
Thy bonds are broke, thy quest in bliss is found,
And one with That which comes as death and life,
Thou helpful one! unselfish e'er on earth,
Ahead, still help with love this world of strife!

Before the Swami left Almora, he arranged to
start again the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata,
which had ceased publication with the death of its gifted editor, B.
R. Rajam Iyer. Swami Swarupananda became its new
editor, and Captain Sevier, the manager. The magazine began
its new career at Almora. Then, on June 11, the Swami, in
the company of his Western disciples, left for Kashmir as
the guest of Mrs. Ole Bull.

The trip to Kashmir was an unforgettable
experience for the Westerners. The natural beauty of the country,
with its snow-capped mountains reflected in the water of
the lakes, its verdant forests, multi-coloured flowers,
and stately poplar and chennar trees, make the valley
of Kashmir a paradise on earth. Throughout the journey
the Swami poured out his heart and soul to his disciples.
At first he was almost obsessed with the ideal of Siva,
whom he had worshipped since boyhood, and for days he
told the disciples legends relating to the great God
of renunciation. The party spent a few days in
house-boats, and in the afternoons the Swami would take his
companions for long walks across the fields. The
conversations were always stimulating. One day he spoke of
Genghis Khan and declared that he was not a vulgar aggressor;
he compared the Mongol Emperor to Napoleon and
Alexander, saying that they all wanted to unify the world
and that it was perhaps the same soul that had incarnated
itself three times in the hope of bringing about human
unity through political conquest. In the same way, he said,
one Soul might have come again and again as Krishna,
Buddha, and Christ, to bring about the unity of mankind
through religion.

In Kashmir the Swami pined for solitude. The
desire for the solitary life of a monk became irresistible; and
he would often break away from the little party to
roam alone. After his return he would make some such
remark as: 'It is a sin to think of the body,' 'It is wrong to
manifest power,' or 'Things do not grow better; they remain as
they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make
in ourselves.' Often he seemed to be drifting without
any plan, and the disciples noticed his strange
detachment. 'At no time,' Sister Nivedita wrote, 'would it
have surprised us had someone told us that today or
tomorrow he would be gone for ever, that we were listening to
his voice for the last time.'

This planlessness was observed in him more and
more as his earthly existence drew towards its end. Two
years later, when Sister Nivedita gave him a bit of worldly
advice, the Swami exclaimed in indignation: 'Plans! Plans! That
is why you Western people can never create a religion! If
any of you ever did, it was only a few Catholic saints who
had no plans. Religion was never, never preached by planners!'
About solitude as a spiritual discipline, the Swami
said one day that an Indian could not expect to know
himself till he had been alone for twenty years, whereas from
the Western standpoint a man could not live alone for
twenty years and remain quite sane. On the Fourth of July
the Swami gave a surprise to his American disciples
by arranging for its celebration in an appropriate manner.
An American flag was made with the help of a brahmin
tailor, and the Swami composed the following poem:

To The Fourth Of July

Behold, the dark clouds melt away
That gathered thick at night and hung
So like a gloomy pall above the earth!
Before thy magic touch the world
Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.
The flowers raise their star-like crowns,
Dew-set, and wave thee welcome fair.
The lakes are opening wide, in love
Their hundred thousand lotus-eyes
To welcome thee with all their depth.
All hail to thee, thou lord of light!
A welcome new to thee today,
O sun! Today thou sheddest liberty!
Bethink thee how the world did wait
And search for thee, through time and clime!
Some gave up home and love of friends
And went in quest of thee, self-banished,
Through dreary oceans, through primeval forests,
Each step a struggle for their life or death;
Then came the day when work bore fruit,
And worship, love, and sacrifice,
Fulfilled, accepted, and complete.
Then thou, propitious, rose to shed
The light of freedom on mankind.
Move on, O lord, in thy resistless path,
Till thy high noon o'erspreads the world,
Till every land reflects thy light,
Till men and women, with uplifted head,
Behold their shackles broken and know
In springing joy their life renewed!

As the Swami's mood changed he spoke of
renunciation. He showed scorn for the worldly life and said: 'As
is the difference between a fire-fly and the blazing
sun, between a little pond and the infinite ocean, a mustard
seed and the mountain of Meru, such is the difference
between the householder and the sannyasin.' Had it not been
for the ochre robe, the emblem of monasticism, he pointed
out, luxury and worldliness would have robbed man of
his manliness.

Thus the party spent their time on the river, the
teacher providing a veritable university for the education of
his disciples. The conversation touched upon all
subjects — Vedic rituals, Roman Catholic doctrine, Christ, St. Paul,
the growth of Christianity, Buddha.

Of Buddha, the Swami said that he was the
greatest man that ever lived. 'Above all, he never claimed
worship. Buddha said: "Buddha is not a man, but a state. I
have found the way. Enter all of you!"'

Then the talk would drift to the conception of
sin among the Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan races. According
to the Vedic conception, the Swami said, the Devil is
the Lord of Anger, and with Buddhists he is Mara, the Lord
of Lust. Whereas in the Bible the creation was under the
dual control of God and Satan, in Hinduism Satan
represented defilement, never duality.

Next the Swami would speak about the
chief characteristics of the different nations. 'You are so
morbid, you Westerners', he said one day. 'You worship
sorrow! All through your country I found that. Social life in
the West is like a peal of laughter, but underneath it is a
wail. The whole thing ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are
all on the surface; really, it is full of tragic intensity. Here it
is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath
are detachment and merriment.'

Once, at Islamabad, as the group sat round him
on the grass in an apple orchard, the Swami repeated what
he had said in England after facing a mad bull. Picking
up two pebbles in his hand, he said: 'Whenever
death approaches me all weakness vanishes. I have neither
fear nor doubt nor thought of the external. I simply busy
myself making ready to die. I am as hard as that' — and the
stones struck each other in his hand — 'for I have touched the
feet of God!'

At Islamabad the Swami announced his desire to
make a pilgrimage to the great image of Siva in the cave
of Amarnath in the glacial valley of the Western
Himalayas. He asked Nivedita to accompany him so that she, a
future worker, might have direct knowledge of the
Hindu pilgrim's life. They became a part of a crowd of
thousands of pilgrims, who formed at each halting-place a whole
town of tents.

A sudden change came over the Swami. He
became one of the pilgrims, scrupulously observing the
most humble practices demanded by custom. He ate one meal
a day, cooked in the orthodox fashion, and sought
solitude as far as possible to tell his beads and practise
meditation. In order to reach the destination, he had to climb up
rocky slopes along dangerous paths, cross several miles of
glacier, and bathe in the icy water of sacred streams.

On August 2 the party arrived at the enormous
cavern, large enough to contain a vast cathedral. At the back of
the cave, in a niche of deepest shadow, stood the image of
Siva, all ice. The Swami, who had fallen behind, entered the
cave, his whole frame shaking with emotion. His naked
body was smeared with ashes, and his face radiant with
devotion. Then he prostrated himself in the darkness of the
cave before that glittering whiteness.

A song of praise from hundreds of throats echoed
in the cavern. The Swami almost fainted. He had a vision
of Siva Himself. The details of the experience he never
told anyone, except that he had been granted the grace
of Amarnath, the Lord of Immortality, not to die until
he himself willed it.

The effect of the experience shattered his nerves.
When he emerged from the grotto, there was a clot of blood in
his left eye; his heart was dilated and never regained its
normal condition. For days he spoke of nothing but Siva. He
said: 'The image was the Lord Himself. It was all worship
there. I have never seen anything so beautiful, so inspiring.'

On August 8 the party arrived at Srinagar, where
they remained until September 30. During this period the
Swami felt an intense desire for meditation and solitude. The
Maharaja of Kashmir treated him with the utmost
respect and wanted him to choose a tract of land for
the establishment of a monastery and a Sanskrit college.
The land was selected and the proposal sent to the
British Resident for approval. But the British Agent refused
to grant the land. The Swami accepted the whole
thing philosophically.

A month later his devotion was directed to Kali,
the Divine Mother, whom Ramakrishna had called
affectionately 'my Mother.'

A unique symbol of the Godhead, Kali represents
the totality of the universe: creation and destruction, life
and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure, and all the
pairs of opposites. She seems to be black when viewed from
a distance, like the water of the ocean; but to the
intimate observer She is without colour, being one with
Brahman, whose creative energy She represents.

In one aspect She appears terrible, with a garland
of human skulls, a girdle of human hands, her
tongue dripping blood, a decapitated human head in one
hand and a shining sword in the other, surrounded by
jackals that haunt the cremation ground — a veritable picture
of terror. The other side is benign and gracious, ready to
confer upon Her devotees the boon of immortality. She reels as
if drunk: who could have created this mad world except in
a fit of drunkenness? Kali stands on the bosom of Her
Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of Brahman; for Kali, or
Nature, cannot work unless energized by the touch of the
Absolute. And in reality Brahman and Kali, the Absolute and
Its Creative Energy, are identical, like fire and its power
to burn.

The Hindu mind does not make a
sweepingly moralistic distinction between good and evil. Both
are facts of the phenomenal world and are perceived to
exist when maya hides the Absolute, which is beyond
good and evil. Ramakrishna emphasized the benign aspect
of the Divine Mother Kali and propitiated Her to obtain
the vision of the Absolute. Swami Vivekananda suddenly
felt the appeal of Her destructive side. But is there really
any difference between the process of creation and
destruction? Is not the one without the other an illusion of
the mind?

Vivekananda realized that the Divine Mother
is omnipresent. Wherever he turned, he was conscious of
the presence of the Mother, 'as if She were a person in the
room.' He felt that it was She 'whose hands are clasped with
my own and who leads me as though I were a child.' It
was touching to see him worship the four-year-old daughter
of his Mohammedan boatman as the symbol of the
Divine Mother.

His meditation on Kali became intense, and one
day he had a most vivid experience. He centred 'his
whole attention on the dark, the painful, and the
inscrutable' aspect of Reality, with a determination to reach by
this particular path the Non-duality behind phenomena.
His whole frame trembled, as if from an electric shock. He
had a vision of Kali, the mighty Destructress lurking
behind the veil of life, the Terrible One, hidden by the dust of
the living who pass by, and all the appearances raised by
their feet. In a fever, he groped in the dark for pencil and
paper and wrote his famous poem 'Kali the Mother'; then he
fell exhausted:

The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds,
It is darkness, vibrant, sonant;
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics,
Just loose from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.
The sea has joined the fray
And swirls up mountain-waves
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand thousand shades
Of death, begrimed and black.
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy,
Come, Mother, come!
For terror is Thy name,
Death is in Thy breath,
And every shaking step
Destroys a world for e'er.
Thou Time, the All-destroyer,
Come, O Mother, come!
Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of death,
Dance in Destruction's dance —
To him the Mother comes.

The Swami now talked to his disciples only about
Kali, the Mother, describing Her as 'time, change, and ceaseless
energy.' He would say with the great Psalmist:
'Though Thou slay me, yet I will trust in Thee.'

'It is a mistake,' the Swami said, 'to hold that with
all men pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to
seek pain. There can be bliss in torture, too. Let us worship
terror for its own sake.

'Learn to recognize the Mother as instinctively in
evil, terror, sorrow, and annihilation as in that which makes
for sweetness and joy!

'Only by the worship of the Terrible can the
Terrible itself be overcome, and immortality gained. Meditate
on death! Meditate on death! Worship the Terrible, the
Terrible, the Terrible! And the Mother Herself is Brahman! Even
Her curse is a blessing. The heart must become a
cremation ground — pride, selfishness, and desire all burnt to
ashes. Then, and then alone, will the Mother come.'

The Western disciples, brought up in a Western
faith which taught them to see good, order, comfort, and
beauty alone in the creation of a wise Providence, were shaken
by the typhoon of a Cosmic Reality invoked by the
Hindu visionary. Sister Nivedita writes:

And as he spoke, the underlying egoism
of worship that is devoted to the kind God, to
Providence, the consoling Deity, without a heart for God in
the earthquake or God in the volcano, overwhelmed
the listener. One saw that such worship was at bottom,
as the Hindu calls it, merely 'shopkeeping,' and
one realized the infinitely greater boldness and truth
of teaching that God manifests through evil as well
as through good. One saw that the true attitude for the
mind and will that are not to be baffled by the
personal self, was in fact that determination, in the stern
words of Swami Vivekananda, 'to seek death, not life, to
hurl oneself upon the sword's point, to become one
with the Terrible for evermore.'

Heroism, to Vivekananda, was the soul of action.
He wanted to see Ultimate Truth in all its terrible
nakedness, and refused to soften it in any shape or manner. His
love of Truth expected nothing in return; he scorned the
bargain of 'giving to get in return' and all its promise of paradise.

But the gentle Ramakrishna, though aware of
the Godhead in all its aspects, had emphasized Its benign
side. One day several men had been arguing before him
about the attributes of God, attempting to find out, by
reason, their meaning. Sri Ramakrishna stopped them,
saying: 'Enough, enough! What is the use of disputing
whether the divine attributes are reasonable or not?...You say
that God is good: can you convince me of His goodness by
this reasoning? Look at the flood that has just caused the
death of thousands. How can you prove that a benevolent
God ordered it? You will perhaps reply that the same flood
swept away uncleanliness and watered the earth, and so on.
But could not a good God do that without drowning
thousands of innocent men, women, and children?'

Thereupon one of the disputants said, 'Then
ought we to believe that God is cruel?'

'O idiot,' cried Ramakrishna, 'who said that? Fold
your hands and say humbly, "O God, we are too feeble and
too weak to understand Thy nature and Thy deeds. Deign
to enlighten us!" Do not argue. Love!'
God is no doubt Good, True, and Beautiful; but
these attributes are utterly different from their counterparts
in the relative world.

The Swami, during these days, taught his disciples
to worship God like heroes. He would say: 'There must be
no fear, no begging, but demanding — demanding the
Highest. The true devotees of the Mother are as hard, as
adamant and as fearless as lions. They are not in the least upset
if the whole universe suddenly crumbles into dust at
their feet. Make Her listen to you. None of that cringing
to Mother! Remember, She is all-powerful; She can
make heroes out of stones.'

On September 30 Swami Vivekananda retired to
a temple of the Divine Mother, where he stayed alone for
a week. There he worshipped the Deity, known as
Kshirbhavani, following the time-honoured ritual, praying and
meditating like a humble pilgrim. Every morning he also
worshipped a brahmin's little daughter as the symbol of the
Divine Virgin. And he was blessed with deep experiences,
some of which were most remarkable and indicated to him
that his mission on earth was finished.

He had a vision of the Goddess and found Her a
living Deity. But the temple had been destroyed by the
Moslem invaders, and the image placed in a niche surrounded
by ruins. Surveying this desecration, the Swami felt
distressed at heart and said to himself: 'How could the people
have permitted such sacrilege without offering
strenuous resistance? If I had been here then, I would never
have allowed such a thing. I would have laid down my life
to protect the Mother.' Thereupon he heard the voice of
the Goddess saying: 'What if unbelievers should enter My
temple and defile My image? What is that to you? Do
you protect Me, or do I protect you?' Referring to this
experience after his return, he said to his disciples: 'All my
patriotism is gone. Everything is gone. Now it is only
"Mother! Mother!" I have been very wrong...I am only a little
child.' He wanted to say more, but could not; he declared that
it was not fitting that he should go on. Significantly, he
added that spiritually he was no longer bound to the world.

Another day, in the course of his worship, the
thought flashed through the Swami's mind that he should try
to build a new temple in the place of the present
dilapidated one, just as he had built a monastery and temple at
Belur to Sri Ramakrishna. He even thought of trying to
raise funds from his wealthy American disciples and
friends. At once the Mother said to him: 'My child! If I so wish
I can have innumerable temples and monastic centres. I
can even this moment raise a seven-storied golden temple
on this very spot.'

'Since I heard that divine voice,' the Swami said to
a disciple in Calcutta much later, 'I have ceased making
any more plans. Let these things be as Mother wills.'

Sri Ramakrishna had said long ago that
Narendranath would live in the physical body to do the Mother's
work and that as soon as this work was finished, he would
cast off his body by his own will. Were the visions at the
temple of Kshirbhavani a premonition of the
approaching dissolution?

When the Swami rejoined his disciples at Srinagar,
he was an altogether different person. He raised his hand
in benediction and then placed some marigolds, which he
had offered to the Deity, on the head of every one of his
disciples. 'No more "Hari Om!"' he said. 'It is all
"Mother" now!' Though he lived with them, the disciples saw
very little of him. For hours he would stroll in the woods
beside the river, absorbed within himself. One day he
appeared before them with shaven head, dressed as the
simplest sannyasin and with a look of unapproachable austerity
on his face. He repeated his own poem 'Kali the Mother'
and said, 'It all came true, every word of it; and I have
proved it, for I have hugged the form of death.'

Sister Nivedita writes: 'The physical ebb of the
great experience through which he had just passed — for
even suffering becomes impossible when a given point
of weariness is reached; and similarly, the body refuses
to harbour a certain intensity of the spiritual life for
an indefinite period — was leaving him, doubtless,
more exhausted than he himself suspected. All this
contributed, one imagines, to a feeling that none of us knew for
how long a time we might now be parting.'

The party left Kashmir on October 11 and came
down to Lahore. The Western disciples went to Agra, Delhi,
and the other principal cities of Northern India for
sightseeing, and the Swami, accompanied by his disciple
Sadananda, arrived at Belur on October 18. His brother disciples
saw that he was very pallid and ill. He suffered from
suffocating attacks of asthma; when he emerged from its painful
fits, his face looked blue, like that of a drowning man. But
in spite of all, he plunged headlong into numerous activities.

On November 13, 1898, the day of the worship of
Kali, the Nivedita Girls' School was opened in Calcutta. At
the end of the inaugural ceremony the Holy Mother,
Sri Ramakrishna's consort, 'prayed that the blessing of the
Great Mother of the universe might be upon the
school and that the girls it should train might be ideal
girls.' Nivedita, who witnessed the ceremony with the
Swamis of the Order, said: 'I cannot imagine a grander omen
than her blessing spoken over the educated Hindu
womanhood of the future.'

The dedication of the school was the beginning
of Nivedita's work in India. The Swami gave her
complete freedom about the way to run it. He told her that she
was free from her collaborators if she so chose; and that
she might, if she wished, give the work a 'definite
religious colour' or even make it sectarian. Then he added, 'You
may wish through a sect to rise beyond all sects.'

On December 9, 1898, the Ramakrishna Monastery
at Belur was formally consecrated by the Swami with
the installation of the Master's image in the chapel. The
plot of land, as already stated, had been purchased in
the beginning of the year and had been consecrated
with proper religious ceremony in March that year. The
Swami himself had performed the worship on that occasion at
the rented house and afterwards had carried on his
shoulder the copper vessel containing the Master's sacred
relics. While bearing it he said to a disciple: 'The Master
once told me, "I will go and live wherever you take me,
carrying me on your shoulder, be it under a tree or in the
humblest cottage." With faith in that gracious promise I myself
am now carrying him to the site of our future Math. Know
for certain, my boy, that so long as his name inspires
his followers with the ideal of purity, holiness, and charity
for all men, even so long shall he, the Master, sanctify this
place with his presence.'

Of the glorious future he saw for the monastery
the Swami said: 'It will be a centre in which will be
recognized and practised a grand harmony of all creeds and faiths
as exemplified in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, and religion
in its universal aspect, alone, will be preached. And from
this centre of universal toleration will go forth the
shining message of goodwill, peace, and harmony to deluge
the whole world.' He warned all of the danger of
sectarianism's creeping in if they became careless.

After the ceremony, he addressed the
assembled monks, brahmacharins, and lay devotees as follows:
'Do you all, my brothers, pray to the Lord with all your
heart and soul that He, the Divine Incarnation of the age,
may bless this place with his hallowed presence for ever
and ever, and make it a unique centre, a holy land, of
harmony of different religions and sects, for the good of the
many, for the happiness of the many.'

Swami Vivekananda was in an ecstatic mood. He
had accomplished the great task of finding a permanent
place on which to build a temple for the Master, with a
monastery for his brother disciples and the monks of the future
that should serve as the headquarters of the Ramakrishna
Order for the propagation of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings. He
felt as if the heavy responsibility that he had carried on
his shoulders for the past twelve years had been lifted.
He wanted the monastery at Belur to be a finished
university where Indian mystical wisdom and Western practical
science would be taught side by side. And he spoke of the
threefold activities of the monastery: annadana, the gift of
food; vidyadana, the gift of intellectual knowledge;
and jnanadana, the gift of spiritual wisdom. These three, properly
balanced, would, in the Swami's opinion, make a
complete man. The inmates of the monastery, through unselfish
service of men, would purify their minds and thus
qualify themselves for the supreme knowledge of Brahman.

Swami Vivekananda in his vivid imagination saw
the different sections of the monastery allotted to
different functions — the free kitchen for the distribution of food
to the hungry, the university for the imparting of
knowledge, the quarters for devotees from Europe and America,
and so forth and so on. The spiritual ideals emanating from
the Belur Math, he once said to Miss MacLeod, would
influence the thought-currents of the world for eleven hundred years.

'All these visions are rising before me' — these
were his very words.

The ceremony over, the sacred vessel was
brought back to the rented house by his disciple Sarat
Chandra Chakravarty, as the Swami did not want to carry back
the Master from the monastery where he had just installed him.

It was a few months before the buildings of the
new monastery were completed and the monastery was
finally removed to its present site. The date of the
momentous occasion was January 2, 1899. The Bengali
monthly magazine, the Udbodhan, was first published on
January 14 of the same year, and regarding its policy, the
Swami declared that nothing but positive ideas for the
physical, mental, and spiritual improvement of the race should
find a place in it; that instead of criticizing the thoughts
and aspirations of ancient and modern man, as embodied
in literature, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, the
magazine should indicate the way in which those thoughts
and aspirations might be made conducive to progress; and
finally that the magazine should stand for
universal harmony as preached by Sri Ramakrishna, and
disseminate his ideals of love, purity, and renunciation.

The Swami was happy to watch the steady
expansion of the varied activities of the Order. At his request
Swami Saradananda had returned from America to assist in
the organization of the Belur Math. Together with
Swami Turiyananda, he conducted regular classes at the Math
for the study of Sanskrit and of Eastern and
Western philosophy. Somewhat later the two Swamis were sent
on a preaching mission to Gujarat, in Western India, and
for the same purpose two of the Swami's own disciples
were sent to East Bengal. Swami Shivananda was deputed
to Ceylon to preach Vedanta. Reports of the excellent
work done by Swamis Ramakrishnananda and Abhedananda
in Madras and America were received at the Math.
Swami Akhandananda's work for the educational uplift of
the villages and also in establishing a home for the
orphans elicited praise from the Government.

One of the most remarkable institutions founded
by Swami Vivekananda was the Advaita Ashrama at
Mayavati in the Himalayas. Ever since his visit to the Alps
in Switzerland, the Swami had been cherishing the desire
to establish a monastery in the solitude of the
Himalayas where non-dualism would be taught and practised in
its purest form. Captain and Mrs. Sevier took up the idea,
and the Ashrama was established at Mayavati, at an
altitude of 6500 feet. Before it there shone, day and night, the
eternal snow-range of the Himalayas for an extent of some
two hundred miles, with Nanda Devi rising to a height of
more than 25,000 feet. Spiritual seekers, irrespective of creed and race,
were welcome at the monastery at Mayavati. No
external worship of any kind was permitted within its
boundaries. Even the formal worship of Sri Ramakrishna was
excluded. It was required of the inmates and guests always to
keep before their minds the vision of the nameless and
formless Spirit.

Swami Vivekananda in the following lines laid
down the ideals and principles of this Himalayan
ashrama:

'In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the
Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in
the Soul, Who is the Soul of man; to know Him, and
therefore the Universe, as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear,
brings an end to misery, and leads to infinite freedom.
Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in
well-being of individuals or numbers, it has been through
the perception, realization, and the practicalization of
the Eternal Truth — the Oneness of All
Beings. "Dependence is misery. Independence is happiness." The Advaita is
the only system which gives unto man complete possession
of himself and takes off all dependence and its
associated superstitions, thus making us brave to suffer, brave to
do, and in the long run to attain to Absolute Freedom.

'Hitherto it has not been possible to preach this
Noble Truth entirely free from the settings of dualistic
weakness; this alone, we are convinced, explains why it has not
been more operative and useful to mankind at large.

'To give this One Truth a freer and fuller scope
in elevating the lives of individuals and leavening the
mass of mankind, we start this Advaita Ashrama on
the Himalayan heights, the land of its first formulation.

'Here it is hoped to keep Advaita free from
all superstitions and weakening contaminations. Here will
be taught and practised nothing but the Doctrine of
Unity, pure and simple; and though in entire sympathy with
all other systems, this Ashrama is dedicated to Advaita
and Advaita alone.'

After the Swami's return from Kashmir his health
had begun to deteriorate visibly. His asthma caused him
great suffering. But his zeal for work increased many times.

'Ever since I went to Amarnath,' he said one day,
'Siva Himself has entered into my brain. He will not go.'

At the earnest request of the brother monks, he
visited Calcutta frequently for treatment; yet even there he had
no respite from work. Visitors thronged about him for
religious instruction from morning till night, and his large heart
could not say no to them. When the brother monks pressed him
to receive people only at appointed hours, he replied:
'They take so much trouble to come, walking all the way from
their homes, and can I, sitting here, not speak a few words
to them, merely because I risk my health a little?'

His words sounded so much like those of
Sri Ramakrishna during the latter's critical illness, no
wonder that Swami Premananda said to him one day, 'We do
not see any difference between Sri Ramakrishna and you.'

But the Swamis greatest concern was the training
of the sannyasins and brahmacharins — the future bearers
of his message — and to this task he addressed himself
with all his soul. He encouraged them in their meditation
and manual work, himself setting the example. Sometimes
he would cook for them, sometimes knead bread, till
the garden, or dig a well. Again, he would train them to be
preachers by asking them to speak before a
gathering without preparation. Constantly he reminded the
monks of their monastic vows, especially chastity and
renunciation, without which deep spiritual perception
was impossible. He attached great importance to
physical exercise and said: 'I want sappers and miners in the
army of religion! So, boys, set yourselves to the task of
training your muscles! For ascetics, mortification is all right.
For workers, well-developed bodies, muscles of iron and
nerves of steel!' He urged them to practise austerities
and meditation in solitude. For the beginners he laid down
strict rules about food. They were to rise early, meditate,
and perform their religious duties scrupulously. Health
must not he neglected and the company of worldly
people should be avoided. But above all, he constantly
admonished them to give up idleness in any shape or form.

Of himself he said: 'No rest for me! I shall die
in harness! I love action! Life is a battle, and one must
always be in action, to use a military phrase. Let me live and die
in action!' He was a living hymn of work.

To a disciple who wanted to remain absorbed in
the Brahman of Vedanta, the Swami thundered: 'Why?
What is the use of remaining always stupefied in samadhi?
Under the inspiration of non-dualism why not sometimes
dance like Siva, and sometimes remain immersed in
superconsciousness? Who enjoys a delicacy more — he who
eats it all by himself, or he who shares it with others?
Granted, by realizing Atman in meditation you attain mukti; but
of what use is that to the world? We have to take the
whole world with us to mukti. We shall set a conflagration in
the domain of great Maya. Then only will you be established
in the Eternal Truth. Oh, what can compare with that
Bliss immeasurable, "infinite as the skies"! In that state you
will be speechless, carried beyond yourself, by seeing your
own Self in every being that breathes, and in every atom of
the universe. When you realize this, you cannot live in
this world without treating everyone with exceeding love
and compassion. This is indeed practical Vedanta.'

He wanted his disciples to perform with accuracy
and diligence the everyday tasks of life. 'He who knows
even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how
to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a
perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure
mind and concentration, the food is not palatable.'

Work cannot produce real fruit without
detachment on the part of the worker. 'Only a great monk', the
Swami said one day, 'can be a great worker; for he is
without attachment….There are no greater workers than
Buddha and Christ. No work is secular. All work is adoration
and worship.'

The first duty of the inmates of the monastery
was renunciation. How the Swami idolized the monastic
life! 'Never forget, service to the world and the realization
of God are the ideals of the monk! Stick to them! The
monastic is the most immediate of the paths. Between the monk
and his God there are no idols! "The sannyasin stands on
the head of the Vedas!" declare the Vedas, for he is free
from churches and sects and religions and prophets
and scriptures. He is the visible God on earth. Remember
this, and go thou thy way, sannyasin bold, carrying the
banner of renunciation — the banner of peace, of freedom,
of blessedness!'

To a disciple who wanted to practise
spiritual discipline to attain his own salvation, the Swami said:
'You will go to hell if you seek your own salvation! Seek
the salvation of others if you want to reach the Highest.
Kill out the desire for personal mukti. This is the
greatest spiritual discipline. Work, my children, work with
your whole heart and soul! That is the thing. Mind not the
fruit of work. What if you go to hell working for others? That
is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your
own salvation....Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for
the world. I will also sacrifice my life. You also, every one
of you, should do the same. All these works and so forth
are only a beginning. Believe me, from the shedding of
our lifeblood will arise gigantic, heroic workers and
warriors of God who will revolutionize the whole world.'

He wanted his disciples to be all-round men. 'You
must try to combine in your life immense idealism with
immense practicality. You must be prepared to go into
deep meditation now, and the next moment you must be
ready to go and cultivate the fields. You must be prepared
to explain the intricacies of the scriptures now, and the
next moment to go and sell the produce of the fields in
the market....The true man is he who is strong as strength
itself and yet possesses a woman's heart.'

He spoke of the power of faith: 'The history of
the world is the history of a few men who had faith
in themselves. That faith calls out the inner divinity. You
can do anything. You fail only when you do not
strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as a
man loses faith in himself, death comes. Believe first in
yourself and then in God. A handful of strong men will move the
world. We need a heart to feel, a brain to conceive, and
a strong arm to do the work....One man contains within
him the whole universe. One particle of matter has all the
energy of the universe at its back. In a conflict between the
heart and the brain, follow your heart.'

'His words,' writes Romain Rolland, 'are great
music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like
the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings
of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books
at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill
through my body like an electric shock. And what shock,
what transports must have been produced when in
burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!'

The Swami felt he was dying. But he said: 'Let me
die fighting. Two years of physical suffering have taken
from me twenty years of life. But the soul changes not, does
it? It is there, the same madcap — Atman — mad upon one
idea, intent and intense.'